For those majors that depend on regional feed, keeping regional people at the regional as long as possible is absolutely necessary. Any pilot who leaves the regional having less than 1000 TPIC has consumed more regional SIC hours than they have generated and FOs leaving for other airlines will take their SIC hours of experience without having generated a single hour themselves. Hence, the 1600 hour PIC requirement and mandatory upgrades.

Contrarywise, anybody they can hire from their competitors - be it a ULCC or the other airlines currently bleeding FOs and junior CAs to the Big Three - is all to the good.

Now I get it. A lot of people don’t WANT to upgrade, or at least don’t want to upgrade until they have so much FO time and seniority that they will not worry about the training event or being the junior CA getting all the cr@p schedules. And what they’d like is to just not ever be junior (or risk an ‘unnecessary’ training event until they have a CJO from their career major. I mean, who WOULDN’T want that? And some would just prefer to hang out as a senior FO, so they can write their own schedule that’s compatible with your side gig, because you enjoy flying as a sort of hobby someone pays you to do. I get that too.

But the regional model isn’t viable if regional management doesn’t get more people to upgrade and stay longer - it’s as simple as that - and the Big Three who use those regionals to provide that feed are going to do their best to help their regionals keep people at their regionals (although they may poach people from the OTHER Big Two’s regional) to make that happen. So right now the fastest course to be considered by the Big Three seems to be get your ATP and a year of flying at a regional and then jump to an LCC/ULCC which has plenty of FO flying because it has a viable CA wage scale (even NK tops out at over $300 an hour plus DC) where you can QUICKLY accumulate flight hours in a 320/737 aircraft and where the Big Three will be hurting a competitor - not their own feed - when they hire you.

 

This is just pure speculation but from my days at OO I’d bet they have around 1,000 Captains who have zero interest is leaving for a Major.

For most regionals that sounds significant but this Airline once had nearly 6000 pilots, half of those being Captains. They will be parking more and more aircraft every single month and I’m shocked they’re running a single new hire class. I’ve read they’re already fat on FO’s and it will get much worse.

When your own leadership says “we’re thinking about the long game” that’s a read between the lines quote. It tells me they’ve decided they’re going to shrink, they have the cash to survive while their competitors fold and they’ll eventually come back as the only shop in town.

As a pilot at SkyWest I wouldn’t want to be any part of that. Plan on your QOL being terrible for a very long time.

 

So what is the way forward for ulccs with growth plans if they have the same people accumulating FO hours and not producing captain hours?

 

The LCC/ULCCs have plenty of CAs. While some of their more junior CAs may jump to the Big Three, the more senior CAs are making $300k a year or better) plus 15-16% 401 k DC and are able to pick and choose (and trade and drop) their trips for max QOL. It’s the old ‘golden handcuffs’ story. Even if they will eventually make more at the Big Three, they’ll never make as much extra as what they’ll give up by starting over.

And replacing those junior guys who do leave is easy, the LCC/ULCCs have lots of upgrade eligible FOs willing to make the jump to CA, even if many of them may eventually jump to the Big Three if they are young enough and junior enough for it to make economic sense. Have you looked at the JetBlue or Spirit payscales recently?

Latest JetBlue rates:







$340 an hour plus 16% DC isn’t a bad place to be if you never get the call from the Big Three, and you are sure a lot more likely to get the call from the Big Three with FO hours in a 737 or 320 than you are with FO hours in a CRJ 200.

 

I was supposed to be 2/20 CRJ and haven't received a new date yet. Do you know if the people that received the new date had over 1500 TT or 121 experience or anything else that would make them stand out? I'm wondering why I haven't been given any update when others are getting the new class date

 

I think they are sending people to classes based upon the hire dates. No way to confirm that because I was in the same class date too.

 

Did anyone receive a class date on ERJ lately?

 

Had a class date of 5/1 in the CRJ that just got indefinitely postponed. The morning before the announcement was sent, my recruiter had just confirmed my class date would work for me... no word from anyone about when we will get a new class date.

 

i was originally scheduled for an early feb class and told it would be at least june/july before that could be rescheduled.

 

I was originally in the 2/10 ATP CTP and 2/20
I emailed my recruiter upon hitting 1,500 for an update.
I was told that they are currently forecasting May/June but that it’s still “subject to change”